By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY — The second session of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, which will bring 368 bishops, priests, religious and laypeople to the Vatican, including Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, of the Diocese of San Diego, will be held Oct. 2 to 27.
In July, the Vatican released a working document of what the second session of the synod would undertake during its monthlong gathering. The document said the synod should spur the Church to become a “refuge” for those in need and encourage Catholics to “allow themselves to be led by the Spirit of the Lord to horizons that they had not previously glimpsed” as brothers and sisters in Christ.
“This is the ongoing conversion of the way of being the Church that the synodal process invites us to undertake,” the document said.
The document will serve as a discussion guideline for the second session, which will reflect on the theme: “How to be a missionary synodal Church.” The reflections are the next step in the synod’s overarching theme: “For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.”
Two key challenges facing the Church are “the growing isolation of people and cultural individualism, which even the Church has often absorbed,” it said.
Synodal practice, however, “calls us to mutual care, interdependence and co-responsibility for the common good,” it said, and it is willing to listen to everyone, in contrast to methods “in which the concentration of power shuts out the voices of the poorest, the marginalized and minorities.”
The document strongly encouraged the “renewal of liturgical and sacramental life, starting with liturgical celebrations that are beautiful, dignified, accessible, fully participative, well-inculturated and capable of nourishing the impulse towards mission.”
And it called for renewing “the proclamation and transmission of the faith in ways and means appropriate to the current context.”
While the second session will focus on certain aspects of synodal life, “with a view to greater effectiveness in mission,” it said, “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the 10 study groups.”
In March, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, announced that Pope Francis had decided that some of the most controversial issues raised during the 2021-24 synod process would be examined by study groups. Among the subjects assigned to the 10 groups are the possible revision of guidelines for the training of priests and deacons, the role of women in the Church and their participation in decision-making processes and community leadership, a possible revision in the way bishops are chosen and a revision of norms for the relationship between bishops and the religious orders working in their dioceses.
The study groups will complete their in-depth study by June 2025, if possible, but will offer a progress report to the synod assembly in October 2024, the document said.
“Ahead of the conclusion of the second session, Pope Francis has already accepted some of the requests of the first session and begun the work of implementation,” it said.
The work of the second session, the document said, will continue the synodal method of “prayer, exchange and discernment” as participants are invited to look at “the missionary synodal life of the Church from different perspectives” by reflecting on three aspects which emerged from previous discussions: relationships within the Church, pathways for formation and places of connection.
“On this basis, a final document relating to the whole process will be drafted and will offer the pope proposals on steps that could be taken,” it said.
Follow the second session of the Synod of Bishops at thesoutherncross.org.
